The loud political fight over high-priced Maine moose hunts

By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff

AUGUSTA — New restrictions on high-priced moose hunts are moving forward despite a bitter clash between guides and an unexpected fight in the Maine Legislature.

Just over 3,700 moose permits are issued for 2026, with 90% of them reserved for Mainers. Another 8% go to non-resident hunters. The remaining 2% are for hunting lodges under a drawing held before the general June moose lottery through a program passed in 2013 to help guides struggling under a collapsing deer population.

The changes pushed by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife were aimed at that sliver. The program has become a boon for lodges selling sure-thing hunts for high prices. Those guides say they are maximizing the economic benefits of the hunt but remain at odds with advocates who want more permits for rank-and-file hunters.

“I think we should have a discussion about whether this program should continue,” David Trahan, the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, said.

Trahan’s group as well as the Maine Professional Guides Association supported the changes to the lodge program that passed last week. Lodges got 74 permits this year under its early lottery, with 37 in the most desirable September season across four popular northern Maine hunting zones. The lodges take no permits during the November season reserved for antlerless moose.

The system has created inequities for non-resident hunters, the department argues. For example, the June lottery will offer no September permits for nonresidents in the Allagash Lakes region of north-central Aroostook County because lodge tags have already consumed the available non-resident allocation, noted Nate Webb, the state’s wildlife division director.

Early attention around this year’s proposal focused on lax controls of the entities that qualified as lodges. For example, restaurants, hotels and a nudist colony have gotten past permits under the program. But many of those types of businesses did not apply this year because the department increased vetting on top of proposing the package of changes.

The final version tightened the lodge rules by limiting the program to guides that have moose hunts out of the same camp for three of the last five years among other restrictions and makes it harder to swap permits. It also limits how heavily lodge permits can concentrate in any single hunting zone and season. It isn’t clear exactly how those changes will fall on guides. 

The debate in Augusta was more sweeping as guides wrangled over the measure through this spring. Lodges that benefit from the program and an Aroostook County business group sent letters lobbying lawmakers, citing potential economic effects. A guide on the other side said Maine’s current law leads to high-charging guides “gaming the system.”

One of the implicit targets of that argument is Nathan Theriault of OMM Outfitters in Eagle Lake. His service got two tags for separate lodges in 2026 and offered them to hunters for nearly $29,000 including lodging and meals. It also gets access to tags in other ways, including Maine’s small auction system and partnering with other lodges.

Theriault, a licensed pilot who has gained a national reputation for his hunts, said the changes amounted to punishing the guides that have done the best job learning the industry and marketing their services. 

“We heard the word ‘fair’ so many times down there,” Theriault said of his time in the State House working on the bill.

“It’s a euphemism for socialism,” his father, Alan, chimed in during a phone interview.

The bill began as a small adjustment supported by Theriault and other outfitters but morphed in a legislative committee into a more sweeping overhaul that passed the panel in a 12-1 vote and got through the House with no roll-call vote earlier this month.

But it was a rocky path through the upper chamber, where Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, won a vote days later to effectively kill it. But the bill easily won a vote the next day in the House. Last week, several senators flipped to pass the bill in an overwhelming 24-10 vote after lobbying from the department and sportsman’s alliance.

Baldacci blamed the department for “inattention to the program” by not increasing vetting earlier. But the other side won out, as illustrated by the position of Sen. Russell Black, R-Wilton, who helped create the program in 2013 but said it has gone beyond what lawmakers intended by allowing lodges to gain access in some way to several permits per year.

“That was never the way that was planned,” he said.